Ode To My Abode
We just signed the lease (don’t worry, only 4 months) on our new apartment and gave the landlords, really cool people who I could totally see myself hanging out with socially, the security deposit so it is time to put my bachelor (in every sense of the word) place behind me. This place had its flaws, there’s no denying that, but I know a part of me will always miss it.
It was cheap which allowed me to step with confidence into the world of single adulthood as well as build up a healthy RRSP, particularly for my age. The rent was all about financial security.
It was so bare when I first came to view it but I saw in it so much potential, as I do with many things. I pretty much had one question before I accepted it and that was if I could fit my bed in where I wanted it.
I made it my own. Well, within my ability. I didn’t repaint the kitchen and living room or retile the bathtub and I had virtually no storage but I think I did pretty well. The bathroom was fine on its own and with some creative use of space the bedroom was really just a transplant from living with my mom, which is exactly what I needed to make it feel like home.
The living room was where I really got going. The desk and area rug Calvin and Elisa helped me get worked out fabulously. I even bought the same desk for my mom.
In an effort to cover the walls I put up any posters that I had. Depeche Mode, Prozzak, and 54-40 for style, Star Trek because I could, and Garfield to make it fun; and later a newer movie poster to make it a bit more modern. I took down those posters the other day; the place looks so sad and barren without them. So much for being a minimalist, those really became a big part of the personality of the place.
And of course the very me Ikea couch that Laura helped with which was never quite long enough for me but fit the place perfectly and the snazzy new computer chair she helped me pick out. And the coffee table that took years to find, even my new LCD monitor that Mindi got me for Christmas. I never bought or accepted any furniture because I needed it or it was a good price, I was willing to wait forever to find something perfect and I eventually did. In time I crossed everything off my list and it was all perfect, just what I had always wanted. Much of that will come with me and be added to but it’ll have to be incorporated into Mindi’s stuff and style as well.
The times I’ve had here…that Christmas when a certain someone dressed up as an elf…the time I created a waterproof seal with silly putty and candle wax…that pathetic attempt at a new year’s party…that time when the delivery guy from Pizza Hut knew me by name…the time the courier thought I was insane…putting up my little tree each year, particularly that first one…playing Catch Phrase with Warren, Burton, and Jon…Watching an entire season of 24 straight through for the first time…wrapping all my presents that first Christmas in Martha Stewart just to prove to my family that I had it together…Jon forcing me to watch Doctor Who…Burton looking after the place while I was in Europe and then apologizing for only cleaning my incredibly cluttered computer desk as if he was expected to do not only that but more when it all came as a very pleasant surprise to me…coming home after a trip and having that line of dialogue from DS9 play in my head “I wonder when that happened? When did I start thinking of this…Cardassian monstrosity as home?”…my funky little light blue vacuum cleaner…shower curtains and welcome mats from dollar stores…running across the street for groceries…Calvin blowing out my pilot light and taking 2 days to discover it…cooking meat for the first, and thus far only, time…walking to Central Park for golf and swimming…Jon bringing me Enterprise episodes…singing while doing dishes…playing Encounters with Burton…and a hundred other moments that could not have happened anywhere else in quite the same way.
Some of those moments I’m very sad to say will likely never come again, others may happen but won’t be quite the same and that’s fine really. But as I look around this place; bare walls and boxes in a corner looking so much like the place I eventually made into a home I can’t help but think no one is likely to treat it as well as I did. Once I got the place looking just right everyone would always comment on how nice it was and how much I had done with so little. Every month the landlord would comment on how he’d never seen it so nice. That first year everyone was very critical, the comparisons to dorm rooms were unending but I think in the end I earned the respect of all who returned for a second glance. Rick, the fellow who used to live in this suite, once said “wow, if I knew it could look this good I wouldn’t have moved”.
It wasn’t the greatest, but it was me.
